China is battling ferocious monsoon rains and deadly storms that have turned entire neighbourhoods into rubble and water within hours. From Gansu province in the northwest to Hubei in central China and Guangxi in the south, the extreme weather has left a trail of destruction. A massive landslide in Gansu buried an entire village, leaving 33 people trapped alive under debris, while a cyclonic storm and tornado in Hubei killed 8 people. Further south, Guangxi province, already reeling from flooding triggered by tropical storm Mesak, has seen dams collapse under the pressure of rising floodwaters. The scale of the disaster has forced authorities to deploy the army and high-tech drones for rescue operations. The back-to-back disasters underline how this year's monsoon season has turned unusually violent across China, striking three separate provinces within the same stretch of days and stretching the country's emergency response machinery to its limits.
Landslide swallows entire village in Gansu
The most harrowing scene played out in Longnan city in Gansu province. Around 7:00 am on Tuesday, while most residents were still asleep, a huge mass of soil and debris broke loose from the hillside and crashed down onto a residential area in the Nanhe locality and Tanchang county. Within moments, the entire settlement was buried under rubble, trapping 33 people alive. The pre-dawn timing of the collapse meant many residents had little chance to flee before the hillside gave way, turning what should have been a quiet start to the day into a desperate scramble for survival. According to state broadcaster CCTV and news agency Xinhua, local authorities scrambled emergency teams to the site as soon as news of the disaster broke. Rescue workers, risking their own lives, have so far pulled 17 people out of the debris alive, though their current condition has not been confirmed. Search teams are still working to locate the remaining 16 people believed to be trapped under the debris, and crews have had to work through unstable, waterlogged ground, making every metre of the search slow and dangerous. The entire area has been evacuated as a precaution, with affected residents moved to safer locations.
Storms and a tornado wreak havoc in Hubei
Even as Gansu grappled with the landslide, central China's Hubei province was hit by fierce storms accompanied by monsoon rain, thunder and a dangerous tornado. The cyclonic storm caused extensive damage in major cities including Huangshi and Huanggang, killing at least 8 people, with one person still reported missing. State media reports say the storm was so violent in Huangzhou district of Huanggang that around 275 people were seriously injured. The tornado's path cut through built-up neighbourhoods, which is why the injury toll climbed so quickly in that district. Powerful winds tore roofs off houses, uprooted large trees and flattened electricity poles like a pack of cards, leaving utility crews with the added task of restoring power once poles and lines had been torn down across the region. Given the severity of the situation, authorities evacuated 408 residents from the area and moved them to safe camps. Debris is scattered everywhere, and emergency teams are working to get the injured to hospitals.
Typhoon Mesak breaches dams, submerges homes in Guangxi
The crisis is even more severe in southern China, where Guangxi province was already struggling with devastating floods caused by tropical storm Mesak. Torrential rain brought by the storm created a situation nobody had anticipated. Because Guangxi was already saturated by Mesak's earlier rainfall, the ground and reservoirs had little capacity left to absorb the fresh downpour, which is part of why the pressure of floodwaters proved too much and the concrete dams of several reservoirs cracked and gave way. Footage aired on state television shows murky floodwater surging through the breached dam walls towards residential settlements. In Fengchenggang city, rivers have crossed the danger mark, leaving hundreds of homes and vehicles completely submerged, and authorities are watching for further breaches even as cleanup work gets under way in areas where the water has begun to recede. Guangxi has so far confirmed 2 deaths, while more than 48,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. In total, the storm has directly affected more than 55,000 people.
Army and high-tech drones join the rescue effort
This triple disaster spanning Gansu, Hubei and Guangxi has posed a major challenge for Chinese authorities. The situation has deteriorated to the point where the government has had to deploy army personnel alongside high-tech drones to reach people stranded in hard-to-access, debris-filled areas as quickly as possible. Rescue teams across all three provinces are working around the clock to pull people out of collapsed debris and rising floodwaters. In Gansu, the search continues through mounds of earth for those still missing; in Hubei, help is being rushed to the injured; and in Guangxi, thousands of newly homeless residents have been housed in temporary camps. Meteorologists have not ruled out further heavy rain over the coming days, which is why evacuation orders and patrols around vulnerable dams and hillsides remain in place across all three provinces even as rescue teams push ahead with the search for those still unaccounted for.
